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Change and Transformation
“The Beacon Group’s program proved to be a transformational experience for our staff, and has created a new, more open culture of creativity and collaboration that has given The Globe and Mail a marked and measurable competitive advantage.” — Phillip Crawley
“The Beacon Group’s thought provoking curriculum utilizes best practice tools and interactive media for evaluation, assessment and overall learning. It has helped us raise the bar on our calibre of talent.” — Ernst Lieb
“The Beacon Group was able to handle our 360 reviews across 9 offices in a manner that brought significant value to our partners, the firm and ultimately our clients.” — Judson Whiteside
“The human capital programs provided by The Beacon Group are best in class.” — Tye Burt
“The Beacon Group acted as a strategic partner and was instrumental in helping us raise the bar on candid dialogue and team performance.” — Robert Courteau
“The Beacon Group approaches very serious and difficult topics in an accessible and insightful way.” — Eric Siegel
“We engaged The Beacon Group when we needed to bring two cultures together after our first major international acquisition: the evidence of their success lies in both the subsequent growth in our business and our presence in more than twelve countries on five continents.” — Rupert Duchesne
“The Beacon Group excels in facilitating open & candid dialogue that has fostered superior team performance.” — Mary Ellen Carlyle
“Top-level thought leadership, combined with practical, cost-effective solutions—that’s the real value the Beacon Group team brings to bear on Foresters talent challenges.” — Suanne Nielsen
“The Beacon Group delivered cutting edge perspectives on many human capital topics that were tailored and customized to our company in a way that we could not have obtained at more generic, cookie-cutter advising shops.” — Doug Lord
“Doug Williamson and his team were of invaluable assistance in helping our organization navigate through a completely new strategic planning process and emerge with a three year plan resoundingly endorsed by our Board. Doug’s global perspectives and ability to drive consensus was an integral part of our success.” — Don Forgeron
“The Global HR & Communications senior team engaged the Beacon Group in shepherding us through a unique strategic planning process that involved an outside-in view of our current and future workforce and how this aligns to our business strategy. Thanks to Doug and his team it was a thought provoking process that sharpened our strategic thinking and, in the end, made our strategy stronger.” — Sylvia Chrominska
“The Beacon Group’s customized and personalized approach fit our needs perfectly. From the initial self-discovery phase all the way to recommending solutions, the work they have done has been consistently world-class. They combine strong analytics with a wealth of real world experience. They are focused, targeted and are experts at taking theoretic concepts and making them real. We look forward to working with Doug and his team as we continue to elevate our business and improve our internal performance.” — Don Romano
“I have had the pleasure of working with The Beacon Group and Doug Williamson for several years across several organizations and have always been impressed with their professionalism, work ethic and customer orientation. Doug's own highly energetic and highly customized approach to the specific needs of our business and our leadership team sets him apart from other strategic facilitators and objective "thought provokers" I have experienced. I am always grateful and impressed by the tangible results his interventions tend to produce.” — Lloyd A. Perlmutter
“The big contribution was The Beacon Group challenged our culture and our comfort level. We then arrived at a clear plan of concise deliverables that we needed to execute to move forward on our vision.” — Tony Ambler
“SKF approached The Beacon Group to develop our Talent Management program. The process implemented by Doug Williamson and his team was extremely important for us in determining how to execute the program on a clear, organized and systematic way. This was one of our most important projects that will enable us to ensure our sustainable growth.” — João Ricciarelli
“Through its sound and strategically practical business knowledge and experience The Beacon Group has and continues to assist SCI in better understanding and enabling our organization to build engaged teams and leadership capability to help make our supply chain clients more competitive.” —John Ferguson |
Provocative PropositionsIn the hyperactive and challenging world in which we all live, it is becoming harder and harder for business leaders to find time to read, reflect and gain insight from the many valuable sources at our disposal. In "Provocative Propositions", The Beacon Group attempts to fill that void by offering our opinion, often rather pointed, on a wide array of issues we believe are relevant to leading a modern organization. The articles are catalogued into 12 categories so you can quickly and easily find a topic of particular interest. We then offer three easy steps under the heading "In Our Opinion" to help business leaders take action on the key themes. Simply click on the category and read away. The Value of Execution
Organizations must move forward. In the post recession world there is no space for pure dreamers, at least not right now. Today, the name of the game is execution. The plane has gone down, now we all have to run full speed away from the burning wreckage.
The fact is – Most senior teams unfortunately become starry eyed dreamers when the word “Strategy” is thrown into the conversation. The problem is – While ideation, and wild ideas are required, often times there is no conceivable way an organization can pull them off. The Outcome is – Organization after organization hoping to hit homeruns when they don’t even know how to swing a bat. In other words, too much emphasis is made on the “fun” part of strategy with nobody willing to do the heavy lifting. The Solution is – to see strategy as a holistic process as well as a team pursuit, wherein different parts of the strategic process are managed differently, and things actually get done. Plan the Strategy Strategy is a multi-stage process. There is the development of the strategic intent, strategic thinking, strategic planning, and strategic review. And, right in the middle of it all is the execution process. What most companies forget is that all the while they are in the strategic thinking and planning process they somehow have to tie everything back into the actual business they currently run. While everyone has romanticized the notion of “transformational change” there has been a significant lack of attention spent on other, less glamorous change processes, which as luck would have it do have some tremendous advantages in their own right. What your organization must do is spend time at the front end of the strategic discussion ensuring that before heads get firmly planted in the clouds there is a process of integration with the operational side of your business – enter the Office of Strategy Management. Office of Strategy Management In this new business environment, there must be an appetite for new things. One of which may be an entirely new organizational function – the Office of Strategy Mangement (OSM). According to authors of "The Execution Premium", Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the OSM “integrates and coordinates activities that align strategy and operations across functions and business units. Essentially, it’s a form of project management that steps back and ensures that the inputs of the strategy process can eventually become outputs. While this may seem like a role for the CEO or COO, this function should involve someone who can step back objectively before the process gets too far out of hand. On Your Marks, Get Set… Once the strategy and the operational capacity have been integrated, it’s time to execute. They key to success is two-fold. On one hand, as the strategy map of an organization links functional roles to each other, there must be a series of strategic initiatives that further the strategy, and an ethic to ensure that each initiative is linked to, and helping the others adjacent to it. Where organizations often fail is in this stage where once the strategy is agreed to, stakeholders rush off into their silos, and nothing every coordinates effectively. In Our Opinion The Beacon Group’s Keys to Ensure Effective Strategy Execution Great Minds – If you really want great buy-in to your strategy, get as many people involved in the crafting of the strategy as possible. Not only will you get tremendous perspective, you will also get great debate. All Hands on Deck – Once the strategy is agreed to, call your employees together. Make sure that everyone knows the intention and desired outcome of the strategy. Only then can you assign strategic initiatives, and ensure they are carried out in the right manner for the right reasons. Communicate, Communicate, communicate – This is where the OSM comes in. Just as there cannot be too much communication going into the strategy process, there is no such thing as too much communication in the execution phase. Make sure progess reports are circulated, roadblocks are dealt with and victories celebrated. |
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